pregnancy fight

Women win the pregnancy fight

The controversial question of com pulsory pregnancy tests for single women entering New Zealand from Western Samoa has been settled.

Samoan women will no longer be examined on entering NZ; instead, West Samoa’s Prime Minister, Tupua Tamasese, has given an undertaking that Samoan doctors will make sure single women are not pregnant before leaving Samoa.

Compulsory pregnancy tests in NZ were originally imposed because, ac cording to the NZ Government, some Samoan women had signified in their immigration papers that they were not pregnant when in fact they were (see PIM, Nov., ’69, p. 34). The tests caused an outcry among Samoan and NZ women’s groups, who found them insulting.

Tupua Tamasese said in December he had been told by NZ Minister of Immigration, Mr. J. R. Marshall, that some 450 single Samoan women had entered NZ for continuing residence in the year ending last August and that about 10 to 15 per cent, of them were pregnant on arrival. He could

“understand” the NZ Government’s view that it was better that these girls should have their babies in Samoa where they could be cared for within the family.

“One of the points made to me in particular was that no Samoan, male or female, can go to New Zealand unless he or she has a guarantee of employment,” he went on. “If a woman, within a few months of her arrival in New Zea land, has a baby, she is unable, for a few months at least, to carry out her undertaking to accept employ ment.”

School Principal Murdered

A Fiji Methodist Mission school principal, Miss Phyllis Ada Furnivall, 40, was murdered in her house at Davuilevu, about 10 miles from Suva on December 12. Miss Furnivall had been in Fiji for about 20 years with the Methodist Mission. She was stabbed and strangled.

Police in December were secretive about progress in their inquiries. A possible clue was the theft of more than $430 from a safe in the school office. It was thought the theft could have occurred on the night of the murder.